» Sport: Beyond The Boundary
Andy Winter: Is England the South African 2nd XI?
Sussex County Cricket Club has always provided a home for players born abroad, from Ranjitsinghji (India) and Tony Greig (South Africa), to Mushtaq Ahmed (Pakistan) and Murray Goodwin (Zimbabwe), to name just a few of our favourite sons.
In his first match for Sussex, played against the MCC at Lord’s in May 1895, Ranjitsinghji scored 77 and 150 runs. Tony Greig went on to lead England. Mushy is an all time legend, with 100 Championship wickets in a season on more than one occasion, and Murray Goodwin now has the two highest First Class scores for the County.
Photo: Clare Calder
But the situation with the national side is something different. There are now five South African-born players in the England setup: Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen, Matthew Prior, Jonathan Trott and, as of last week, Craig Kieswetter.
Of these five, Prior and Strauss can rightfully claim to be the product of the County game, and both were educated in the UK and learned their cricket here. Matt Prior was in the Sussex Youth Academy from his earliest teens, and represented Sussex and England at every age group from the age of 13.
By contrast, Kieswetter represented South Africa at Under 19 level in the 2005/06 season, before trading his allegiances to England, becoming qualified to play for this country in mid February. In his defence, he received some of his education in England at Millfield School. Wisden Cricket’s website, www.cricinfo.com, summarises Kieswetter’s flexible nationality well: “He is already on the (England) selectors’ radar and qualifies in February 2010 – unless South Africa come calling first”.
Trott and Pieterson decided to ‘become’ English only in their early adulthood. Players such as these who, parachute into the country’s cricket team, will lead to demoralisation amongst those County players who are knocking on the England team door.
“Players who parachute into the country’s cricket team will lead to demoralisation among County players”
The danger for English cricket is not the number of non-England players plying their trade at the County game. For County players, there are real advantages in having to perform against the best in the game, and their performance can only improve as a result. However, I believe there should be some limits on the number of overseas players in any one team, and there should continue to be financial rewards for those Counties who field locally produced players.
There may come a point when English supporters will lose patience at the number of my fellow South Africans turning out in England colours. During the recent tour of South Africa, in one of the limited over internationals, the only non-South African on the field of play was the West Indian umpire.
For England there is a real danger of being seen as the South African second team!
